Apricot Wood
I built a frame of apricot
wood. This was for you. The clouds float
through it even as I sleep. You wrote
once of wild herbs gathered and brought
to a lovely girl, an offering not
of passion but of some remote
desire to hear a word from the throat
of the Lord Within Clouds. I thought
of this as I chiseled the wood.
Last night it rained. I listened to
it from my bed by the open
window, hoping that the clouds would
not leave. This morning two birds flew
by. It is raining again.
by Robert Okaji, first published in SPSM&H
Editor’s Note: This poem demonstrates what I think of as a “new form” sonnet. The rhyme is embedded within the sentences, leaving the enjambment to function much as it would in a free verse poem. Because of the lack of iambic meter, the form of the poem allows the surreal quality of the narrative to function as it should: dreamlike and scattered.
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